Forum to Cover Racial Issues, War on Drugs

Students and faculty from the University of Cincinnati’s

Department of History

have organized a “Race and the War on Drugs” forum for next month.

Educator assistant professor Charles F. Casey-Leininger and his “History of the Civil Rights Movement” class have studied Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (New York: New Press, 2010), and they will host this special event. The forum is open to the UC community and the general public, and it will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Dec. 4 in McMicken Hall, Room 43.

The keynote speaker will be David A. Singleton, executive director of the

Ohio Justice & Policy Center

. The Cincinnati-based nonprofit law office works for statewide reform of the criminal justice system, including the elimination of racial disparities.

Associate professor of history Isaac Campos-Costero will provide historic context on the war on drugs. Campos-Costero is the author of several articles examining this issue in the United States and Latin America as well as his recent book, “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Ronald L. Jackson II, dean of the

McMicken College of Arts and Sciences

, will open the forum with welcoming remarks and an introduction of the speakers.

For more information, contact Casey-Leininger at 513-556-2167.